44 BOYS OF THE BIBLE.

invents wants very often, before providing for them. But
civilization had not yet been born, and our first parents were
not cultured enough to have many wants. But with work
to do, and health, and all their needs met every day, and a
prattling baby in the house, we are inclined to think that
Adam and Eve were, or ought to have been, tolerably
happy. Of the mother’s happiness we have little doubt.
There was a whole world of unspeakable joy for her, in her
growing, beautiful boy. As then, so now; and as now, so
then—one little child was quite enough to fill a mother’s
whole horizon with unspeakable delight.

All in good time came another boy to share with Cain
the love and care of the first parents. Of the early years
of Cain and Abel we know scarcely anything; we can only
dream, and fancy, and ‘guess. They would almost surely
be dressed in the skins of beasts. That was the only
clothing possible. For their delight and amusement, Nature
would be all sufficient. The young lambs in the meadows,
the birds building their nests, the fish darting along in the
shallow streams, would afford them occasions of rare delight.
Childhood passed on to boyhood, and boyhood into youth,
and youth to early manhood. There were no books, no
schools, no teachers. The home was the school, the college,
the university. What a happy, busy life Eve had with her
two boys! What long pleasant talks they had in the dewy
eventime. How her heart yearned toward her two boys!
How she doated on them! How she dreamed of their future!

An English writer, long since dead, who wrote much for
boys, draws the following picture of these early years of
the world’s first brothers:

“May we not picture before our imagination this first
mother of the world and her two boys, herself seated on a